[Teacher-talkhswriters] Workshop 7

It's great that you persisted in the sensory writing lesson even though you had to backtrack a bit to get everyone on the same page. By analyzing an author's style and sentence structure, you were getting into the higher level thinking skills that our students need to apply. It seems that when we push our students a bit, they can really deliver (sometimes exceeding our expectations!).

This lesson also clearly demonstrates the reading/writing connection and getting students beyond the "surface level."

For the rest of our group: Has anyone tried the "Deconstructing an Essay" lesson in the Workshop 7 "Classroom Connection"? This is where you take an essay that students have not read, cut it into separate paragraphs and challenge them to put it together in an effective order. I believe this about this approach was mentioned at one of our meetings.

Kathy K.

Tawna's Teacher Talk

I completed the lesson on sensory writing incorporating imitation. I think some of the students struggled at first about what I was asking them to do. As a result, we took a step back and did another example together as a large group. We took an excerpt from a book, discussed the word choices the author chose, looked at sentence structure and patterns, and then wrote one together on the board imitating how this particular author wrote. Once they understood what to do everyone got started. Many helped each other when trying to come up with varying vocabulary. Some stayed close to what they writer had written while others branched out a little more and created something unique but with the same structure. My upper level ESOL student had the most difficult time. He ended up with a very nice writing, but he took a very long time to complete the assignment.

The entire lesson took a little longer than I expected. I think maybe they actually took some time and thought about what they were writing. In the end, all were impressed with their writings and wanted to share them with the group.

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